I don’t what it is about weddings and photoshoots in desert settings that get me giddy with excitement. This one by Brushfire Photography and Scheme Events is no exception. Fluffy, romantic pink flowers are mixed with succulents for the arrangements, with heaping dashes of oranges and teals throughout the tablescape. The color palette against the natural backdrop is just plain delicious.

From the photographer, Brittany: We wanted the shoot to appeal to DIY brides and the destination crowd since it has many DIY elements and was put together at Valley of Fire State Park in Las Vegas, Nevada. We chose Seven Sisters at Valley of Fire State Park because it is such a unique landscape. It is about an hour drive off the Las Vegas Strip and the perfect location for a couple who wants to get away. When driving there, the road curves around the desert and towering rock formations without any red rock in sight. You know you have arrived when you get around the final curve and see bright red rocks hundreds of feet tall in the distance to create a huge valley of fire.

Kelly and Shawn were not a real couple but they got along right away and we all had such a great time climbing the rocks and admiring the contrast of bright red rocks and blue mountains in the distance. Occasionally a car would drive by, but for the most part we had the gorgeous Seven Sisters all to ourselves. We decided to use a stitched theme for all the design elements. Milestone Paper Company did an amazing job with the paper designs and it was a perfect match to Scheme Events design. We wanted small hints of the desert represented and did that by including the small succulents and the cholla cactus skeleton. While I was stitching one of the paper elements I noticed the book title was Stone Dreams. We all immediately fell in love with the idea and found it was the perfect description of how we were feeling at The Valley of Fire.

Very pretty! But I never did understand why when you’re doing a styled shoot, you wouldn’t use a real couple. Wouldn’t that be special and meaningful to them, and illustrate a real connection between two people, which is what this whole industry is about? Just a thought. Stunning though.

They have real weddings there all the time. There was actually a wedding ending and leaving while we were driving up. We used models because it is very difficult to find real couples to do things like this. We would love to use a real couple in the future though.